After the olive pruning season, you’ll probably have tons of olive branches that you don’t know what to do with them. Luckily, there are great things that you can do with olive branches, and today I’ll show you 7 fantastic ways to use them in your garden, home, or anywhere else.
In my opinion, the worst thing you can do is burn them. That won’t bring you anything good, and you’ll just have plenty of ash to clean and take care of. Many people still burn them because they don’t know a better way of using olive branches, and that’s the goal of this post.
I’d like to change peoples’ opinion on olive branches, and I’d like to show you various ways you can use them to have at least some benefits from them.
7 Ways To Use Olive Tree Branches
Without furder ado, let’s see all the ways you can use olive tree branches and cuttings. You’ll probably like a few of them, especially the first one (if you have an olive tree orchard).
1. Use Them as a Mulch
Olive tree branches can be a great mulch for your olive orchard or any other type of fruit orchard. Branches still have vitamins and minerals inside, and it would be a shame not to use them for stimulating the growth of your olive trees.
To create mulch from olive tree branches, you’ll need a woodchopper. If you don’t already own it, you should buy it as soon as possible, since there are plenty of benefits of using mulches. Wood chippers/shredders aren’t expensive, and you’ll quickly pay them off by grinding the branches from one pruning season only.
One of the best and most affordable wood shredders out there is SunJoe CJ603E Wood Chopper (check the price on Amazon now), which doesn’t cost a fortune, but still can grind twigs and branches up to 1.73 inches thick – which is more than enough for olive trees.
2. Grow a New Olive Tree
Even though I suggest growing olive trees from seedlings, it’s possible to grow an olive tree from the branches/twigs. If you don’t want to spend extra money on choosing a good olive seedling, you can always use branches from pruning to get new olive trees.
Growing an olive tree from cuttings is still much quicker than growing olive trees from seeds. It takes a seed up to 18 months to grow into a seedling, and by planting an olive branch, you can save yourself at least 12 months.
Propagating olive trees from cuttings is straightforward, as long as you follow some basic guidelines which you can check in the link at the beginning of this sentence.
3. Wedding Decorations
Olive branches symbolize peace, which can be a great addon for wedding decoration. If you’re an olive grower, you can contact companies that do wedding decorations, they might be interested in olive tree branches, and you could be making some extra money from them.
On the other hand, if you need some olive branches for your own wedding, by contacting a few olive growers, you’ll probably be able to get olive branches for a very low price, maybe even for free (unless they read this article hehe).
The biggest con of this is that olive branches should be fresh, so, if you’re having a wedding outside of the pruning season, olive growers might refuse you. However, there’s always a chance that they have some spare trees for these special purposes.
4. Home Design
Olive tree cuttings can be used for beautifying the home. Home design trends are changing all the time, but olive tree branches are extremely popular nowadays, and I hope they’ll stay like that for many years to come.
Olive leaves are attractive, they look great, and branches don’t take up a lot of space. Yet, they’ll quickly improve the design of any room in your house, especially if you like the natural look of your home, and you like to use green and brown colors for your home decor.
The same thing as with a wedding, they should be fresh, since olive branches will usually dry out after 5 days. However, you can always plant them in some pot, and maybe even grow a small olive tree from them. That’ll be a fantastic addon to your home design.
5. Flower Arrangements
You don’t often see olive branches in flower arrangements, but they can be a great filler. If you don’t want too many flowers in the arrangement, you can fill the empty space with olive branches. They’ll look great, natural, and will also give some extra scent to the arrangement.
Olive tree branches go especially well with roses (both red and white), dahlias, red peony flowers, and flor magnolia. You can check some olive branch flower arrangements here.
6. Use Olive Branches To Fire a Grill
Olive branches are extremely calorific, which means they’re great as firewood. Using them for starting a fire for your BBQ is a great way to spend them during the year. Not only they’ll quickly heat the grill, but they’ll also add some additional smell to the food, which is fantastic.
However, if you don’t like using coal or briquettes, make sure to use thicker olive branches, since thin ones won’t keep the embers for a long time. Personally, I use them to start a fire, and then I pour some briquettes for extra ember so that I can grill larger amounts of food.
If you like grilling sea fish, using olive branches is a way to go. They’re also fantastic for grilling vegetables. And for all of you meat lovers, don’t worry, you can use them for grilling meat, too – but the meat may get some Mediterranean taste (which I adore).
7. Create Staff and Sell It On Etsy
If you’re an artistic soul, you could even generate some extra income from olive branches from your olive orchard. Many people create some works of art and sell them on online shops such as Etsy.
Only the sky is the limit, so make sure to use your imagination and create some attractive pieces of art that people will likely buy.
You wouldn’t believe it, but people sell olive branch bouquets for $10 or more. Check this one for instance. Making bouquets is extremely easy, so anyone can do it, even if you don’t have a lot of knowledge of the art.
If bouquets sell for $10, imagine what price could you get for some more advanced pieces of art made from olive tree branches.
Conclusion
As you could see, there are some great ways to use olive tree branches. I think it would be a shame to burn them all and miss all the opportunities of using them in other ways. Olive tree cuttings shouldn’t be considered waste. I hope that you’ll try at least one of the things mentioned above, I’m sure you’ll like it.
Probably, the best way you can use them is to make a mulch from them, or by selling them on Etsy and other online shops (especially around Easter).
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